[Web4lib] Fwd: [CIRCPLUS] Student admits he lied about Mao bo ok

[Knuth, Pat MS IMA-Europe]

But the original story I read said the the agents arrived at the student's
house with the book in hand.  Which implies that one of the libraries
involved handed the book over.  Under those circumstances, I might have
thought the reporter would ask a library about it.

Pat

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Patricia F Anderson
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 4:00 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Cc: Patricia F Anderson
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Fwd: [CIRCPLUS] Student admits he lied about Mao bo
ok

On Tue, 27 Dec 2005, Knuth, Pat MS IMA-Europe wrote:

> Maybe I missed seeing it, but I kept wondering why no one was 
> attempting to contact the library (or any library) to ask about this 
> supposed watch list of books.

How would the library know? That is what made the story so plausible. The
backbone of the Internet was ARPANET, owned by US military. It does not seem
improbable that there might be ways for various units of the US government
to observe aspects of Internet traffic that attract their attention. With
ILL processes so dependent on the Internet these days, what was described
may be possible, whether or not it has actually ever happened.

Asking a library about how their internal processes were observed by an
outside agency would be like asking a celebrity (or anyone) how they allowed
a stalker to follow them. How do you know you are being observed, until
contact is made?

What seemed unlikely to me would be that the FBI would place a
(hypothetical) methodology like this at risk by contact, and then reveal
their source. I am sure that if the FBI was watching ILL traffic via the
Internet, they would find some other plausible reason to give for contacting
an individual of interest, or simple decline to provide a reason.

A very interesting story and unveiling. Thought provoking, in any case.

-- Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich.edu
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